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Pluskut Tukker posted:Lol at the idea of believing numbers produced by, or with the consent of, the Cuban regime. yeah the cia world factbook is notoriously lax in verifying basic information about countries it lists
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Nov 26, 2016 09:33
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Bad Hat Meter posted:Thanks so much for posting this excellent article about Cuba's revolutionary democracy, Berated Tham! I can't tell if you people are legit or being sarcastic.
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Nov 26, 2016 09:33
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punk rebel ecks posted:I can't tell if you people are legit or being sarcastic. i mean that's two math debater sock accounts quoting each other so i'm having the same problem
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Nov 26, 2016 09:36
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*registers new math explainer anagram acct*
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Nov 26, 2016 09:40
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pretty lol to read this thread as if every "fidel" is in reference to me. never wanted nuclear war in 1962. i could never develop nukes until like the 2000s and only used them once because gently caress Gandhi and his aggression.
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Nov 26, 2016 09:41
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Homework Explainer posted:yeah the cia world factbook is notoriously lax in verifying basic information about countries it lists LOL at the idea that they'd be in a position to verify basic information about Cuba.
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Nov 26, 2016 09:41
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Atrocious Joe posted:Remember that band named Viet Cong that changed their name after becoming convinced that the Viet Cong were a terrorist group that targeted the Vietnamese that band is pretty good
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Nov 26, 2016 09:42
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blamegame posted:that band is pretty good check out their first album 'viet cong'
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Nov 26, 2016 09:44
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Sheng-ji Yang posted:otoh fidel recognized how lovely people like rubio and cruz are and took all their poo poo and kicked em out of the country i wish
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Nov 26, 2016 09:45
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Not only was he a great man, but he also died age 69.
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Nov 26, 2016 09:46
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the math debaters have been purged, a fitting tribute to comrade fidel
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Nov 26, 2016 09:51
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Michael Bayleaf posted:Not only was he a great man, but he also died age 69. Este es el número de relaciones sexuales
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Nov 26, 2016 10:09
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*in orbit above cuba abord the USS Trump* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIGHCoVzqtk
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Nov 26, 2016 10:18
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lol @ internet irony men who suddenly think death & oppression aren't funny anymore when communists do it
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Nov 26, 2016 10:22
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Fidel Castronaut posted:Este es el número de relaciones sexuales a huevo
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Nov 26, 2016 10:29
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*in extremely thatcher voice* The problem with the eternal international anticolonial revolution is that eventually you run out of other people's bourgeoisie to extirpate.
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Nov 26, 2016 11:14
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Over the weekend the vultures got into the Presidential Palace by pecking through the screens on the balcony windows, and the flapping of their wings stirred up the stagnant time inside, and at dawn on Monday the city awoke out of its lethargy of centuries with the warm, soft breeze of a great man dead and rotting grandeur. Only then did we dare go in without attacking the crumbling walls of reinforced stone, as the more resolute had wished, and without using oxbows to knock the main door off its hinges, as others had proposed, because all that was needed was for someone to give a push and the great armored doors that had resisted the lombards of William Dampier during the building’s heroic days gave way. It was like entering the atmosphere of another age, because the air was thinner in the rubble pits of the vast lair of power, and the silence was more ancient, and things were hard to see in the decrepit light. All across the first courtyard, where the paving stones had given way to the underground thrust of weeds, we saw the disorder of the quarters of the guard who had fled, the weapons abandoned in their racks, the big, long rough-planked tables with plates containing the leftovers of the Sunday lunch that had been interrupted by panic, in the shadows we saw the annex where Government House had been, colored fungi and pale irises among the unpled briefs whose normal course had been slower than the pace of the driest of lives, in the center of the courtyard we saw the baptismal font where more than five generations had been christened with martial sacraments, in the rear we saw the ancient viceregal stable, which had been transformed into a coach house, and among the camellias and butterflies we saw the berlin from stirring days, the wagon from the time of the plague, the coach from the year of the comet, the hearse from Progress in Order, the sleepwalking limousine of the first century of peace, all in good shape under the dusty cobwebs and all painted with the colors of the flag. In the next courtyard, behind an iron grille, were the lunar-dust-covered rosebushes under which the lepers had slept during the great days of the house, and they had proliferated to such a degree in their abandonment that there was scarcely an odorless chink in that atmosphere of roses which mingled with the stench that came to us from the rear of the garden and the stink of the henhouse and the smell of dung and fermented urine from the cows and soldiers of the colonial basilica that had been converted into a milking barn. Opening a way through the asphyxiating growth we saw the arches of the gallery with potted carnations and sprigs of astromeda and pansies where the concubines’ quarters had been, and judging from the variety of domestic leftovers and the quantity of sewing machines we thought it possible that more than a thousand women had lived there with their crew of seven-month runts, we saw the battlefield disorder of the kitchens, clothes rotting in the sun by the washbasins, the open slit trench shared by concubines and soldiers, and in back we saw the Babylonian willows that had been carried alive from Asia Minor in great seagoing hothouses, with their own soil, their sap, and their drizzle, and behind the willows we saw Government House, immense and sad, where the vultures were still entering through the chipped blinds. We did not have to knock down the door, as we had thought, for the main door seemed to open by itself with just the push of a voice, so we went up to the main floor along a bare stone stairway where the opera-house carpeting had been torn by the hooves of the cows, and from the first vestibule on down to the private bedrooms we saw the ruined offices and reception rooms through which the brazen cows wandered, eating the velvet curtains and nibbling at the trim on the chairs, we saw heroic portraits of saints and soldiers thrown to the floor among broken furniture and fresh cow flops, we saw a dining room that had been eaten up by the cows, the music room profaned by the cows’ breakage, the domino tables destroyed, and the felt on the billiard tables cropped by the cows. Abandoned in a corner we saw the wind machine, the one which counterfeited any phenomenon from the four points of the compass, so that the people in the house could bear up under their nostalgia for the sea that had gone away, we saw birdcages hanging everywhere, still covered with the sleeping cloths put on some night the week before, and through the numerous windows we saw the broad and sleeping animal that was the city, still innocent of the historic Monday that was beginning to come to life, and beyond the city, up to the horizon, we saw the dead craters of harsh moon ash on the endless plain where the sea had been. In that forbidden corner which only a few people of privilege had ever come to know, we smelled the vultures’ carnage for the first time, we caught their age-old asthma, their premonitory instinct, and guiding ourselves by the foul smell from their flapping wings in the reception room we found the wormy shells of the cows, their female hindquarters repeated many times in the full-length mirrors, and then we pushed open a side door that connected with an office hidden in the wall, and there we saw him, in his denim uniform without insignia, in his boots, the gold spur on his left heel, older than all old men and all old animals on land or sea, and he was stretched out on the floor, face down, his right arm bent under his head as a pillow, as he had slept night after night every night of his ever so long life as a solitary despot. Only when we turned him over to look at his face did we realize that it was impossible to recognize him, even though his face had not been pecked away by vultures, because none of us had ever seen him, and even though his profile was on both sides of all coins, on postage stamps, on condom labels, on trusses and scapulars, and even though his engraved portrait with the flag across his chest and the dragon of the fatherland was displayed at all times in all places, we knew that they were copies of copies of portraits that had already been considered unfaithful during the time of the comet, when our own parents knew who he was because they had heard tell from theirs, as they had from theirs before them, and from childhood on we grew accustomed to believe that he was alive in the house of power because someone had seen him light the Chinese lanterns at some festival, someone had told about seeing his sad eyes, his pale lips, his pensive hand waving through the liturgical decorations of the presidential coach, because one Sunday many years ago they had brought him the blind man on the street who for five centavos would recite the verses of the forgotten poet Rubén Dario and the blind man had come away happy with the nice wad they had paid for a recital that had only been for him, even though the blind man had not seen him, of course, not because he was blind but because no mortal had ever seen him since the days of the black vomit, and yet we knew that he was there, we knew it because the world went on, life went on, the mail was delivered, the municipal band played its retreat and silly waltzes on Saturday under the dusty palm trees and the dim street lights of the main square, and other old musicians took the places of the dead musicians in the band. In recent years when human sounds or the singing of birds were no longer heard inside and the armored doors were closed forever, we knew that there was someone in Government House because at night lights that looked like a ship’s beacons could be seen through the windows of the side that faced the sea, and those who dared go closer could hear a disaster of hooves and animal sighs from behind the fortified walls, and one January afternoon we had seen a cow contemplating the sunset from the presidential balcony, just imagine, a cow on the balcony of the nation, what an awful thing, what a stinking country, and all sorts of conjectures were made about how it was possible for a cow to get onto a balcony, since everybody knew that cows can’t climb stairs, much less carpeted ones, so in the end we never knew if we had really seen it or whether we had been spending an afternoon on the main square and as we strolled along had dreamed that we had seen a cow on the presidential balcony, where nothing had been seen or would ever be seen again for many years, until dawn last Friday, when the first vultures began to arrive. Rising up from where they had always dozed on the cornices of the charity hospital they came, they came from farther inland, they came in successive waves, out of the horizon of the sea of dust where the sea had been, for a whole day they flew in slow circles over the house of power until a king with bridal-fan feathers and a crimson ruff gave a silent order and that breaking of glass began, that breeze of a great man dead, that in and out of vultures through the windows imaginable only in a house which lacked authority, so we dared go in too and in the deserted sanctuary we found the rubble of grandeur, the body that had been pecked at, the smooth maiden hands with the ring of power on the bone of the third finger, and his whole body was sprouting tiny lichens and parasitic animals from the depths of the sea, especially in the armpits and the groin, and he had the canvas truss on his herniated testicle, which was the only thing that had escaped the vultures in spite of its being the size of an ox kidney, but even then we did not dare believe in his death, because it was the second time he had been found in that office, alone and dressed and dead seemingly of natural causes during his sleep, as had been announced a lung time ago in the prophetic waters of soothsayers’ basins. The first time they found him had been at the beginning of his autumn, the nation was still lively enough for him to feel menaced by death even in the solitude of his bedroom, and still he governed as if he knew he was predestined never to die, for at that time it did not look like a presidential palace but, rather, like a marketplace where a person had to make his way through barefoot orderlies unloading vegetables and chicken cages from donkeys in the corridors, stepping over beggar women with his famished godchildren who were sleeping in a huddle on the stairs awaiting the miracle of official charity, it was necessary to elude the flow of dirty water from the foulmouthed concubines who were putting fresh flowers in the vases in place of nocturnal flowers and swabbing the floor and singing songs of impossible love to the rhythm of the dry branches that beat rugs on the balconies, and all of it in the midst of the uproar of tenured civil servants who found hens laying eggs in desk drawers, and the traffic of whores and soldiers in the toilets, and a tumult of birds, and the fighting of street dogs in the midst of audiences, because no one knew who was who, or by whom, in that palace with open doors in the grand disorder of which it was impossible to locate the government. The man of the house not only participated in that marketplace disaster but had set it up himself and ruled over it, for as soon as the lights in his bedroom went on, before the cocks began to crow, the reveille of the guard gave notice of the new day to the nearby Conde barracks, and from there it was repeated for the San Jerónimo base, and from there to the harbor fort, and there it would be repeated in the six successive reveilles that would first awaken the city and then the whole country, while he meditated in the portable latrine trying to stifle with his hands the buzzing in his ears, which was beginning to show itself at that time, and watched the passage of the lights of ships along the fickle topaz sea, which in those days of glory was still beneath his window. Every day, ever since he had taken possession of the house, he had supervised the milking in the cow barns, to measure with his own hand the quantity of milk that the three presidential wagons would carry to the barracks in the city, in the kitchen he would have a mug of black coffee and some cassava without knowing any too well the direction in which the whimsical winds of the new day would blow him, always attentive to the gabbling of the servants, who were the people in the house who spoke the same language as he, whose serious blandishments he respected most, and whose hearts he best deciphered, and a short time before nine o’clock he would take a slow bath in water with boiled leaves in the granite cistern built in the shadow of the almond trees of his private courtyard, and only after eleven o’clock would he manage to overcome the drowsiness of dawn and confront the hazards of reality. Previously, during the occupation by the Marines, he would shut himself up in his office with the commandant of the landing force to decide the destiny of the nation and sign all manner of laws and decrees with his thumbprint, for in those days he did not know how to read or write, hut when they left him alone with his nation and his power again he did not poison his blood with the sluggishness of written law but governed orally and physically, present at every moment and everywhere with a flinty parsimony but also with a diligence inconceivable at his age, besieged by mobs of lepers, blind people, and cripples who begged for the salt of health from his hands, and lettered politicians and dauntless adulators who proclaimed him the corrector of earthquakes, eclipses, leap years, and other errors of God, dragging his great feet of an elephant walking in the snow all through the house as he resolved problems of state and household matters with the same simplicity with which he gave the order take that door away from here and put it over there for me—they took it away—put it back again for me—they put it back—the clock in the tower should not strike twelve at twelve o’clock but twice during the daytime so that life would seem longer—the order was carried out, without an instant of hesitation, without a pause—except for the mortal hour of siesta time, when he would take refuge in the shade of the concubines. He would choose one by assault, without undressing her or getting undressed himself, without closing the door, and all through the house one could hear his heartless panting of an urgent spouse, the craving tinkle of his gold spur, his dog whimper, the surprise of the woman who wasted her time at love in trying to get rid of the squalid stares of the seven-month runts, her shouts of get out of here, go play in the courtyard, this isn’t for children to see, and it was as if an angel had flown across the skies of the nation, voices were muffled, life came to a halt, everybody remained stone-still with a finger to his lips, not breathing, silence, the General is screwing, but those who knew him best had no faith even in the respite of that sacred moment, for it always seemed that he was in two places at once. They would see him playing dominoes at seven o’clock at night and at the same time he had been seen lighting cow chips to drive the mosquitoes out of the reception room, nor did anyone harbor any illusions until the lights in the last of the windows went out and they heard the noise of the three crossbars, the three locks, the three bolts on the door of the presidential bedroom, and they heard the thump of the body as it collapsed from fatigue onto the stone floor, and the breathing of a decrepit child that grew deeper as the tide rose, until the nocturnal harp of the wind silenced the cicadas and their fiddling and a broad big sea wave swept through the streets of the ancient city of viceroys and buccaneers and poured into Government House through all the windows like a tremendous August Saturday that caused barnacles to grow on the mirrors and left the reception room at the mercy of the sharks, and it rose higher than the highest levels of prehistoric oceans and overflowed the face of the land and space and time, and only he remained floating face down on the lunar water of his dreams of a solitary drowned man, in his denim private soldier’s uniform, his boots, his gold spur, and with his right arm folded under his head to serve as a pillow. The rest of the first chapter continued. twoday has issued a correction as of 12:06 on Nov 26, 2016 |
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Nov 26, 2016 11:19
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I wonder if García Márquez realized he was writing about Castro, too.
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Nov 26, 2016 11:40
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Pluskut Tukker posted:I wonder if García Márquez realized he was writing about Castro, too. he was a pretty big supporter of castro his entire life so probably not
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Nov 26, 2016 12:06
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That's why I wondered.
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Nov 26, 2016 12:32
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¡viva cuba, libre y socialista!
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Nov 26, 2016 12:56
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Nov 26, 2016 13:18
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fake rear end socialist
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Nov 26, 2016 13:19
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Fidel Castronaut posted:pretty lol to read this thread as if every "fidel" is in reference to me. never wanted nuclear war in 1962. i could never develop nukes until like the 2000s and only used them once because gently caress Gandhi and his aggression. Sorry your granddad died. My goondolences
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Nov 26, 2016 13:20
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Bernie's week got even worse
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Nov 26, 2016 13:30
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Nov 26, 2016 13:31
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There should be a Sabermetrics for human misery inflicted by a government or corporate leader, then we could decide if Castro was really bad, or just overvalued because of his fiery behavior and tendency to flip bats.
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Nov 26, 2016 13:53
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I never actually bothered to google maps Guantanamo bay and it's wayyyy bigger than I thought it was. If only Batista made it through and the entire island could be a torture palace.
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Nov 26, 2016 13:57
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What's a good book to read if I know next to nothing about fidel castro and why people thought he was good/why people thought he was bad and I am curious to learn more
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Nov 26, 2016 15:21
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wow, i knew he was fast but......
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Nov 26, 2016 15:42
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Eduardo Galeano on Fidel Castro: His enemies say he was an uncrowned king who confused unity with unanimity. And in that his enemies are right. His enemies say that if Napoleon had a newspaper like Granma, no Frenchman would have learned of the disaster at Waterloo. And in that his enemies are right. His enemies say that he exercised power by talking a lot and listening little, because he was more used to hearing echoes than voices. And in that his enemies are right. But some things his enemies do not say: it was not to pose for the history books that he bared his breast to the invaders' bullets, he faced hurricanes as an equal, hurricane to hurricane, he survived 637 attempts on his life, his contagious energy was decisive in making a country out of a colony, and it was not by Lucifer's curse or God's miracle that the new country managed to outlive 10 US presidents, their napkins spread in their laps, ready to eat it with knife and fork. And his enemies never mention that Cuba is one rare country that does not compete for the World Doormat Cup. And they do not say that the revolution, punished for the crime of dignity, is what it managed to be and not what it wished to become. Nor do they say that the wall separating desire from reality grew ever higher and wider thanks to the imperial blockade, which suffocated a Cuban-style democracy, militarized society, and gave the bureaucracy, always ready with a problem for every solution, the alibis it needed to justify and perpetuate itself. And they do not say that in spite of all the sorrow, in spite of the external aggression and the internal high-handedness, this distressed and obstinate island has spawned the least unjust society in Latin America. And his enemies do not say that this feat was the outcome of the sacrifice of its people, and also of the stubborn will and old-fashioned sense of honor of the knight who always fought on the side of the losers, like his famous colleague in the fields of Castile.
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Nov 26, 2016 15:52
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Looks like he finally became a good communist (the only good communist is a dead communist)
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Nov 26, 2016 15:53
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FirstAidKite posted:What's a good book to read if I know next to nothing about fidel castro and why people thought he was good/why people thought he was bad and I am curious to learn more learning more about castro means learning more about socialist cuba imo. the cuban constitution is a good place to start. this is the 1992 version. the 2002 version is here if you want stuff on castro specifically, "my life" from the man himself is one obvious pick. another would be tad szulc's "fidel: a critical portrait." szulc worked for the new york times covering the revolution and had enormous resources at his disposal. it's still considered the definitive castro biography. there's tons of stuff on cuba generally and i can point you in the right direction on that too, if you'd like
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Nov 26, 2016 15:57
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Breakfast All Day posted:serious q for the neolibs itt: do you actually think castro was worse than batista, or that cuba is worse off for his rule vs a string of whatever dictators we wouldve placed? no i just think it's laughable that homex told a cuban expat with dead relatives killed by Castro to gently caress off for being happy about him dying the moment you stop critically engaging with your own side,you're lost in a sad little moral quagmire; one reason the radical left can be good is it's better than everyone else for being morally serious about its own failures and places them in a proper context, instead of building flawed models and examples up to be heroes
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Nov 26, 2016 16:03
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Disinterested posted:no i just think it's laughable that homex told a cuban expat with dead relatives killed by Castro to gently caress off for being happy about him dying my favorite kind of "leftism" is the non-materialist idealist kind
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Nov 26, 2016 16:08
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Quasimango posted:Lmao, the MIAMI HERALD, who you might expect to take this seriously, has devoted a quarter of its Castro front page to attacking Colin Kaepernick's take on him. That article is from yesterday, before Castro died. 49ers play the Dolphins so the Cuban sports reporter got in to it with Kaepernick.
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Nov 26, 2016 16:09
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Homework Explainer posted:my favorite kind of "leftism" is the non-materialist idealist kind If people really want to put what happened in Cuba into the context of CIA torture gardens and the extremely (since the beginning of the USA) long held desire to make Cuba a protectorate, sure. If you think Marx or leftist thought entails that Cuba had to pass through its brutal dictator phase for contingent, materialist reasons is a form of moral absolution for the actors involved - it isn't, and Marx didn't think so, nor did Lenin. Not that i can tell what you're trying to say here. Or that it matters, since Fidel's project is over and his death is entirely symbolic
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Nov 26, 2016 16:14
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zen death robot posted:Posted from my iPhone 7+ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism
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Nov 26, 2016 16:15
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Is not, was never intended to be a form of moral analysis.
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Nov 26, 2016 16:19
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what in the heck
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Nov 26, 2016 16:20
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